These Are The People Of Colour In Game Of Thrones

This Is How People of Colour Are Portrayed In Every Season Of Game Of Thrones

There is a scene on Netflix’s Dear White People where Joelle describes Game of Thrones as “That shit with dragons set in the world where no one's Black except the slaves.” I was very curious about how accurate this description was, considering the show’s return on July 16. I didn’t doubt the accuracy of the statement — I’ve read all the books and seen every episode and I wouldn’t necessarily call George R. R. Martin woke — but I wanted to get into some specifics.

Obviously, there are a couple of well-known Black characters on the show. But what about the lesser known ones? And what about non-Black people of colour on the show? Just how diverse is our favorite fantasy series?

Spoiler alert: On a show with over 150 major characters and thousands of other nameless, faceless actors, Game of Thrones is not very diverse at all. Because quantifying every single brown face on the show would be nearly impossible, given their affinity for war scenes and mass slavery storylines, I decided to do a season-by-season analysis of how people of colour are represented (many times it’s by white actors) and the standout actors of colour in each season.